The Water Thief, Imagines the Corporate-Controlled Future of America — Think WTO!
What will the world be like under the rule of the WTO …
Dystopian Novel, The Water Thief, Imagines the Corporate-Controlled Future of America
Saturday, 13 July 2013 09:16 By Martha Sorren, Truthout | Book Review
(Image: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform)
With the government increasingly protecting corporations instead of people, as with Citizens United, it won’t be long before corporations become more important than people – if they aren’t already. Nicholas Soutter has imagined this world where corporations own everything, including people, in his dystopian novel The Water Thief.
More 2084 than 1984, Soutter’s Kirkus Star winning novel follows Charles Thatcher, a worker considered to be of mid-contract value in a corporate world, who seeks to learn more about the long-dead "government" where people weren’t traded like stocks and no one owned the air.
The book simultaneously makes you grateful for the system of government that we have now, and afraid that our system could be headed its direction.
Soutter writes: "The only real check against corruption is vigilance. That was the death of republics: they thought the system was enough to protect them, that they didn’t need to be involved. Citizens let go of the rope, nobody voted, nobody got educated on the complexities of governing. And the corporations moved in." MORE